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Noony vs Furry, an invitation to PROBLEM SOLVING.

Now, both of you have had me blast both of you. I will NOT post in this thread and consider it ONE ON ONE. I may start another peanut gallery thread. But this one is between the two of you.

But keep this in mind. I hear constantly in the news how both sides want peace. And I am sure there are PLENTY in both camps who do.

However, it seems that it is a peace based on all or nothing and the submission of the other.

My postulation TO BOTH SIDES, is that neither wants to budge because of history of tradition and RELIGION.

"Just follow me" seems to be what the other side says will solve all the problems, which WONT happen.

So how DO each of you think this problem can be solved without the baggage of the past? Neither side can undo what has been done. Neither can get rid of the other.

I would like to think BOTH of you know ultimately no matter how much each side in this conflict disagrees, that ultimately we are still dealing with humans.

So without HE SAID SHE SAID, and with out "MINE" or "THEY STARTED IT"

What would each of you do if you could have the power to end this conflict right now?

I want each of you to talk as humans, not labels. As if BOTH of you were trying to arbitrate a fight between co-workers or friends or family members.

"We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus -- and nonbelievers."ObamaCheck out my poetry here on Rational Responders Like my poetry thread on Facebook under BrianJames Rational Poet also on twitter under Brianrrs37

I will point out that the consequence of the absentee laws was that JNA ownership went from 5% before to 92% after making the criminal theft to be 87% of Mandate Palestine by ISRAELI numbers.

JNF ownership of Israel is 13 or 14% of the land, depending on how you round the numbers.

As regards confiscating lands which were held by hostile Arabs, that's the way war works -- you wage war and lose, you keep on losing. You don't get a "do-over". Arabs who were hostile to Israel =left=, of their own free will, as part of a deal they made with the Arab states that attacked Israel. The deal was "get out of the way, and we'll give you the Jewish lands we take." Those Arabs freely accepted that bargain and they lost. I'm sorry they lost, but that's the way war goes.

I'm going to explain this to you the way I've explained it countless times, not that I expect it to make a difference.

Either "might doesn't make right" and Jewish lands that were taken from us 2,000 years ago by Romans (then Christians and Muslims) remains ours, or "might makes right" and the country is now ours. Which ever way you take it, the land is ours. Either because it was ours before the Romans came and it remains ours to this very day, or it's ours because we took it. Personally, I prefer the former because the later justifies having war after war after war. In my experience of Western democracies, aboriginal claim do seem to have a fair bit of weight, and that's the basis for Jewish claim -- we've been there since the Bronze Age, which is a pretty damned long time. I have a slew of other arguments if you don't like this one, but they all lead to one inescapable result -- Israel is ours.

Finally, in regards to your comment about banning -- there is nothing wrong with DISAGREEING. Free speech should protect DISAGREEMENT, but free speech has no obligation towards outright lying, deception and deceit, particular when those lies are used to foment hatred and violence, which yours do. Either RRS is a website that is based on hard evidence, with the objective of creating a more just and humanistic society, or it isn't. If RRS is just a place for people who believe in god and/or gods to do battle with those who don't, so be it. But that does not appear to be the case.

This is obviously Brian Sapient's party and he can do with it as he sees fit, but I happen to believe that he has a mission beyond merely providing a forum in which people shout at each other and/or spout lies in order to further their claims. If I didn't believe that, I wouldn't be spending my time here.

"Obviously I'm convinced of the existence of G-d. I'm equally convinced that Atheists who've led good lives will be in Olam HaBa going "How the heck did I wind up in this place?!?" while Christians who've treated people like dirt will be in some other place asking the exact same question."

I agree I think WW2 is still being milked way after the fact to set up taboos and entitlement. But again, I cannot support Palestine's rulers because they would NOT set up a secular government. A "democracy" in a pure sense is nothing but mob rule. I would have to have assurances from their leaders that the government they set up would be religion neutral and would protect minorities.

I think however because of Israel's own dogmatism in wanting a "Jewish state' instead of a secular state, the two have locked horns. I have sympathy for humans on BOTH sides that are merely victims of respective citizenry and birth. But I have NO sympathy for either side's rulers. I think BOTH Noony and Furry are perfect examples of missing the point and why this conflict continues.

Actually, Gaza was governed by the secular Fatah party up until Hamas took power. Did that stop the Israelis from using excessive force? Of course not.

FurryCatHerder wrote:

I'd suggest you study the origins of the Jewish National Fund and complaints against the JNF. I'd then ask if you agree that private property ownership of land by the JNF grants the JNF the right to limit who the land can be leased to, and who can work that land. I'd then ask if private property rights convey the right of self-defense, for without the right to defend ones private property against an attacker, there is no right to private property.

Does "property rights" include illegal settlements in the West Bank? Does it include bombing civilians? Does it including killing Egyptian border guards? Does it include boarding and attacking humanitarian aid ships?

I'd suggest you study the origins of the Jewish National Fund and complaints against the JNF. I'd then ask if you agree that private property ownership of land by the JNF grants the JNF the right to limit who the land can be leased to, and who can work that land. I'd then ask if private property rights convey the right of self-defense, for without the right to defend ones private property against an attacker, there is no right to private property.

Does "property rights" include illegal settlements in the West Bank? Does it include bombing civilians? Does it including killing Egyptian border guards? Does it include boarding and attacking humanitarian aid ships?

Many illegal settlements are, or have been, demolished, regardless of whether they are illegal buildings built by Jews or Arabs. You need to remember that Arabs =also= construct buildings illegally. It's not just a Jewish problem.

Civilian casualties are a tragedy of war. When you consider that Arabs often use human shields, and not just in Israel, civilian casualties are an all too common problem. Which is what the Arabs want, one way or the other -- for civilians to be a deterrent against military action, or for civilian casualties to be used against whoever is doing the military action.

I don't know the facts about killing Egyptian border guards. If this is the events --

then it's just another tragedy caused by Arab violence against Israel. Getting the Arabs to stop attacking Israel would be one way to stop these situations from happening in the first place.

Many humanitarian aid ships include dual-use materials. As such, they are legitimate targets for the Israeli blockade. There is no reason, other than breaking the blockade of Gaza, that those ships need to enter Gazan waters directly. The blockade serves the legitimate security interests of Israel, so I have no problem with its continued enforcement.

"Obviously I'm convinced of the existence of G-d. I'm equally convinced that Atheists who've led good lives will be in Olam HaBa going "How the heck did I wind up in this place?!?" while Christians who've treated people like dirt will be in some other place asking the exact same question."

I don't think it was Brian, but it was one of the people I lump in along with Brian ("good and smart people" ), but whoever it is put the Tanakh this way -- to other people, it is a religion, to us, it is family history.

And I'd suggest you sit down and give the book of Numbers a good read -- we already have the family register as a religion.

Except, Numbers is not history. Not any one's. The historical events written about at the time the Torah was written are as accurate as people without modern technology for knowledge storage and retrieval could make it.

The rest is myths.

Look at it this way. I'm going to write a history of the United States........

"In the beginning, from sea to shining sea, there were two great cities, San Francisco and New York. The streets were paved with gold, the people were handsome, strong and intelligent."

Okay, there were two places where people congregated that eventually became cities. But the rest is baloney.

That is most of the Torah.

As for the rest of the argument -

Jews were (wrongfully IMNSHO) oppressed and so they stole the land - with a little assistance from various other nations. Stolen is not too strong a word because the land had never been theirs. See that archaeological textbook. That is why Finkelstein and Silberman are reviled by many in Israel. If the people who moved to Israel after WWII ever internalized this reality, it would not be a pretty sight.

I am not saying this ever justifies persecuting the Jewish people for being holier than thou or for supposedly causing another mythical person to be executed or for having curly hair. Since I don't believe the character Jesus ever existed, I don't think looking down on the people who had nothing to do with him is either moral or ethical. And maybe persecuting people for being holier than thou is a good thing, but let's start with the ones who are most obnoxious about it. And they ain't Jewish.

I don't have a solution that will please anyone, let alone everyone, to the Israel / Palestinian mess. And no one who could do anything about it would listen to me anyway.

-- I feel so much better since I stopped trying to believe.

"We are entitled to our own opinions. We're not entitled to our own facts"- Al Franken

"If death isn't sweet oblivion, I will be severely disappointed" - Ruth M.

I don't think it was Brian, but it was one of the people I lump in along with Brian ("good and smart people" ), but whoever it is put the Tanakh this way -- to other people, it is a religion, to us, it is family history.

And I'd suggest you sit down and give the book of Numbers a good read -- we already have the family register as a religion.

Except, Numbers is not history. Not any one's. The historical events written about at the time the Torah was written are as accurate as people without modern technology for knowledge storage and retrieval could make it.

Except that you run into what I call "the day before yesterday" problem.

Let's assume, for the sake of argument, that the Documentary Hypothesis crowd is correct and "yesterday" Ezra (l'havdil) handed out the new Torah and says "Okay, now that we're back from the Babylonian Captivity, I've managed to piece together a bunch of stuff from the scraps we had left over, and here they are."

The people read it and they say .... what? "Hey, thanks for doing that" or "You got a lot of it wrong, buddy". For the most part, there seems to be a lot of silence, except for three groups.

Samaritans -- the first group of "You got a lot of it wrong, buddy" people are the Samaritans and we know what they say the hypothetical Ezra got wrong, and they were saying the same thing BEFORE the Babylonian captivity. They claim, not that Numbers is all wrong, or Genesis, or any other of the first five books, they claim that the particular hill on which the Temple is supposed to be built is in =their= part of Israel. That's it, that's the extent of it.

Sadducees -- the next group is the Sadducees. What is their trip? Simple -- they were the "fundamentalists" of their era. There is a Temple, it is central to worship of G-d, all this stuff has to happen there, and it's all very important. They don't claim that the temple cult rituals are wrong, that Genesis is wrong, that Numbers is wrong, or that anything else is wrong in the entire Torah, only that what is IN the Torah must be practiced in very strict ways and that the Temple is Very Important. When the Temple was destroyed, they went the way of the Dodo Bird because the central focus of their existence no longer existed. Again -- no disputes with the five books of Moses, just disputes with the significance of the temple cult.

Karaites -- the next group is the Karaites. What is there trip? They are the "extremeists" of their era. The Torah must be interpreted even =more= literally, and it must be interpreted using ONLY the written Torah, not the oral traditions that are used by modern Orthodox and many Conservative Jews. So again, no dispute in ancient times with the five books of Moses, but plenty of disputes with how =strictly= those five books had to be used in ordinary affairs.

So there is no instance of the "day before yesterday" problem. There are three major examples of disputes which disagree with what became modern Rabbinic Judaism, but =zero= instances in which the accuracy of the Torah, as written, is called into question.

If you look at American History, we have the "day before yesterday" problem in a wide variety of areas, and they all do with things like the intent of the Framers. We can go back nearly 300 years into the Enlightenment and dig up various foundations for what eventually became the Constitution and we can debate about what the Constitution should be meaning, and we can do that to a far greater extent than what can be done with the Hebrew texts. For example, what's this business with Free Speech?

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The rest is myths.

Look at it this way. I'm going to write a history of the United States........

"In the beginning, from sea to shining sea, there were two great cities, San Francisco and New York. The streets were paved with gold, the people were handsome, strong and intelligent."

Okay, there were two places where people congregated that eventually became cities. But the rest is baloney.

Right, and the Torah doesn't claim that before Jerusalem existed as a hill there was a great and mighty city / temple / castle / whatever built on that hill. The Torah doesn't claim that the Garden of Eden was like what Atlantis was claimed to be. The Torah doesn't claim =anything= near the rebuttable claims that "In The Beginning there was New York and San Francisco". We know when New York came into existence, we know how it was developed, we know it used to be New Amsterdam. We know that San Francisco was founded, coincidentally because it was founded by Spaniards, in 1776.

So your "in the beginning" flunks tests that the Torah doesn't flunk.

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Jews were (wrongfully IMNSHO) oppressed and so they stole the land - with a little assistance from various other nations. Stolen is not too strong a word because the land had never been theirs. See that archaeological textbook. That is why Finkelstein and Silberman are reviled by many in Israel. If the people who moved to Israel after WWII ever internalized this reality, it would not be a pretty sight.

Not sure when you're saying it was "stolen", but there's too much well-supported history to claim that it was =ever= stolen. And if you throw out the Bible, there's too much history from a purely "historical" standpoint to support that claim either.

"Obviously I'm convinced of the existence of G-d. I'm equally convinced that Atheists who've led good lives will be in Olam HaBa going "How the heck did I wind up in this place?!?" while Christians who've treated people like dirt will be in some other place asking the exact same question."

Yea, just your own Jewish state. AND FOR THE LAST TIME, you were NOT Chosen. You were part of evolution and you merely chose a club that told you you were chosen. You are not special, Muslims are not special, atheists are not special. No individual is special, no group is special. No one was "chosen".

"We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus -- and nonbelievers."ObamaCheck out my poetry here on Rational Responders Like my poetry thread on Facebook under BrianJames Rational Poet also on twitter under Brianrrs37

Yea, just your own Jewish state. AND FOR THE LAST TIME, you were NOT Chosen. You were part of evolution and you merely chose a club that told you you were chosen. You are not special, Muslims are not special, atheists are not special. No individual is special, no group is special. No one was "chosen".

Yup. Just our own country where =we= are in control of our destiny, not someone else.

And for the umpteenth time, if you'd like to be "chosen" as well, I can tell you where to go and what to do so you can also be "chosen". Funny how being "chosen" doesn't seem like such a hot idea to the people who complain about it ...

"Obviously I'm convinced of the existence of G-d. I'm equally convinced that Atheists who've led good lives will be in Olam HaBa going "How the heck did I wind up in this place?!?" while Christians who've treated people like dirt will be in some other place asking the exact same question."

Either "might doesn't make right" and Jewish lands that were taken from us 2,000 years ago by Romans (then Christians and Muslims) remains ours,

There is your fucking problem right there. THAT is why most of the middle east hates Israel, right there.

I'll make you a deal, you can have your "Jewish state", if when a DNA SAMPLE proves any Arab is directly related to ANY of the Pharaohs of Egypt and get the Muslim and Koptic Christians to give the rights to the ancient Pyramids and tombs back to that blood line. You know damned well that isn't going to happen.

Then when you do that, I'll give back the land to the Native Americans. After all fair is fair.

Otherwise the past is the past. Same thing I am trying to tell Noony. But both of you ARE stuck in the past.

"We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus -- and nonbelievers."ObamaCheck out my poetry here on Rational Responders Like my poetry thread on Facebook under BrianJames Rational Poet also on twitter under Brianrrs37

Just our own country where =we= are in control of our destiny, not someone else

Yes you are, and Palestine is too. But both are to fucking stupid to see that ones own actions affect others.

And if Jefferson were alive today he would FUCKING BITCH SLAP both of you.

Both sides try to pull otherwise neutral people like me into picking sides. There . But when this fecal matter of human ignorance festers in both camps, both of you look like a married couple in a domestic dispute trying to convince the cops the other started it.

What do you want me to say? I think a Jewish state is ok? NO, I don't believe in a bloodline state, anymore than I believe that Stalin or Po Pot's monochromatic mentality solved any problems. And I wont side with Noony either because his side would set up a pecking order as well.

THE ONLY SOLUTION I see long term is for more and more people to look at COMMON LAW, not common label, not common race, not common history, not common politics, not common religion.

COMMON LAW. When both camps get to that point, THAT is when peace will be achieved.

"We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus -- and nonbelievers."ObamaCheck out my poetry here on Rational Responders Like my poetry thread on Facebook under BrianJames Rational Poet also on twitter under Brianrrs37

When it came out, my older brother joked that he'd made the cover of Rolling Stone. My father and my brother favor each other. My son -- yeah, if he let's his hair go, winds up with that same mess of hair. He also doesn't have pink skin or blue eyes.

So. You were saying?

I am saying you don't look like a Jew from the time of Christ backwards in time. Are you telling me you aren't a Russian Jew, Polish Jew, or some other qualifier? You are pure breed? So what if you have brown eyes and brown hair. Lots of my relatives do. Look at the Italians. And as for bushy hair my family of tons of it. If my daughter lets her hair grow it goes totally wild. It is from my mother's mothers side. I am a mix of English, German & Italian. That is the point. We are all humans and we are all originally Africans. The rest is meaningless hogwash to just separate us and for saying "I am better than you", which is straight up BS. You like science. From that point what separates us. Melanin and little else?

Bob Dylan is white. So what? He is one of my heros. Unfortunately the drugs f*ck up his brains and HE HAD TO GO TO monotheism, the scourge of humanity. From Judaism to Christianity. Same G*d, different BS.

Furry wrote:

Because what the Jews are chosen to do isn't World Domination -- there is no claim to land outside of Eretz Yisrael, unlike what Germany, or Spain, or Islam, or Christianity, or Rome, or Greece, Persia, Assyria, Babylon =or= Egypt. It is bringing about an end to the type of divisiveness that you're railing against. An end to violence, hunger, poverty, and so on -- see Isaiah, and I don't mean the Christian misinterpretations about virgins giving birth to little baby Jesus.

My point wasn't about world domination, but G*d domination. The Jews have THE God and they have a RIGHT to THIS piece of dirt. But the Muslim say the same thing. It is insane on both sides. What is so special about that piece of dirt? Is it more sacred than the dirt where you live now? If so, that is the problem.

Tell me about how the divisiveness has gone away since 1949. Where is your Isaiah now? You really believe that primitive goat herders knew if you bring all sthe Jews who are really in name only back to a specific location on the earth, G*d's GPS tracker throws up a race finish flag and in a woman's pleasant voice announce "They have arrived at their destination. Activate world peace". G*d will only then start to bless the earth and all is well. He should cut the bullshit and activate it now. A Jew is another human being and no better or worse than anyone else. If everyone who thought they were G-d's gift to the world would just wake up and be just one of another 7 billion humans, the world would be a better place. That would activate world peace, not fighting over whose G-d has a bigger d-ck.

You know religions don't want everyone in their club because in order to survive they need something to hate. What monotheistic religion is NOT like that?

OK. So everybody go back to where there heritage is from. For me I have to be cut into at least 3 parts, one to England, one to Germany and one to Italy (I prefer the latter, but I digress). But wait, all humans came from Africa, so lets all go back there. This is entirely illogical.

I am for all of us to let the BS go and live where we are now. Geographic changes don't fix anything. I am your brother in humanity and that should suffice.

Religion Kills !!!

Numbers 31:17-18 - Now kill all the boys. And kill every woman who has slept with a man, but save for yourselves every girl who has never slept with a man.

As for Israel's defence of "We were here first: I wonder how many of it's American supporters will give their land back to the Native Americans?

I tried to point that out to BOTH Furry AND Noony, but that seems to be lost on both of them.

Pesky assholes like me prefer "the past is the past" and the only way forward is to not forget the past, but at the same time deal with the reality as it is now.

It ultimately boils down to humans forgetting that others are human. As soon as you do that, you can and do get stuck in the past.

Both Muslims and Jews think land was given to them. I don't care if either wants to claim a god or a tradition. What I see from these claims is death. Both missing the fact that HUMANS die.

"We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus -- and nonbelievers."ObamaCheck out my poetry here on Rational Responders Like my poetry thread on Facebook under BrianJames Rational Poet also on twitter under Brianrrs37

As for Israel's defence of "We were here first: I wonder how many of it's American supporters will give their land back to the Native Americans?

The political boundaries have moved all over the place throughout the world, countless times.

Even Canada is "stolen land". Do you plan on giving it back to the natives? Though y'all had an easier time in stealing it.

What nation in Europe is not comprised of invaders that "stole the land"?

One can play the game of we were here first with just about every nation in the world.

If we all dwell on the past, then we'd still be enemies with Germany, Japan, Britain, Viet Nam, Italy, Turkey, Spain, Mexico, and Canada to just mention a few.

I'm in the position where I agree with both you and Brian at the same time. That may be a first.

____________________________________________________________
"I guess it's time to ask if you live under high voltage power transmission lines which have been shown to cause stimulation of the fantasy centers of the brain due to electromagnetic waves?" - Me

"God is omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent, - it says so right here on the label. If you have a mind capable of believing all three of these divine attributes simultaneously, I have a wonderful bargain for you. No checks please. Cash and in small bills." - Robert A Heinlein.

I tried to point that out to BOTH Furry AND Noony, but that seems to be lost on both of them.

Pesky assholes like me prefer "the past is the past" and the only way forward is to not forget the past, but at the same time deal with the reality as it is now.

It ultimately boils down to humans forgetting that others are human. As soon as you do that, you can and do get stuck in the past.

Both Muslims and Jews think land was given to them. I don't care if either wants to claim a god or a tradition. What I see from these claims is death. Both missing the fact that HUMANS die.

Look, if it were just a matter of learning to live together, I doubt there'd be any conflict at all and we'd all get along just fine. Israel =had= non-Jews living in Israel in ancient times. A lot of those people ran off and joined the Tribe, but that wasn't a requirement -- if you want a 6 day work week and life in a socialist state with a safety net for the poor, Israel =was= that.

The problems are caused by what I described -- if Jews prosper, it must be because they stole something from Muslims, because the Qur'an really does say so in their opinion. It didn't help that Turks and Arabs sold us crappy land and we turned it into "good" land, we took "good" land and made it more productive than Arab "good" land.

Up until 1948 100% of Jewish land was bought-and-paid-for by other Jews, but we were still attacked -- from the end of WWI until Independence, we were routinely subjected to terrorist attacks by the Arabs, leading up to Palestinians allying themselves with Adolf Hitler. This doesn't get all that much press because it's pretty damning on the part of the poor peace-loving Palestinians, but the facts are that Arab states were on the Axis (Germany for anyone educated in the U.S. after about 1980 ...) side in WWII and fought right along side Hitler's forces in a number of theatres, including within Mandatory Palestine.

In other words, they were happy to take our money, so long as they got to kill us later, or claim that we'd "stolen" what we bought and paid for. If anyone did any stealing, it was the Turks and Arabs we bought the land for -- paying far in excess of what the land was worth.

There have been some claims that we threw Arabs off of land they were working, but that's another lie -- David ben-Gurion viewed Arab labor as a resource, in the sense that as the Jewish population increased, we'd need more workers and there was no point in forcing any out. The only issue is that the Jews who'd paid for the land bought it for Jews to use, particularly at a time when violence against European Jewry was on the rise. In the early 1900's Jews were attacked in Russia for causing all manner of supposed problems, and then into the 1920's and beyond Jews were targeted as a supposed cause for the defeat of Germany in WWI.

Palestinian Arabs have had countless opportunities for peace, but don't just reject them, they outright work to avoid them. With few exceptions, Arabs caught inside of the borders of the State of Israel at the time of Independence were left alone, and many of those families are still within Israel today.

"Obviously I'm convinced of the existence of G-d. I'm equally convinced that Atheists who've led good lives will be in Olam HaBa going "How the heck did I wind up in this place?!?" while Christians who've treated people like dirt will be in some other place asking the exact same question."

During WWII US and Japan were bitter enemies. Both lost millions to the other. in 1941, Japan launched a surprise attack against he US and sank several of their ships. he US retaliated and fought bloody battles with them in southeast Asia. The battles were bloody and Japan commited suicide attacks against advancing US forces. While Germany surrendered, Japan dug in and kept killing US soldiers. Then in 1945, the US killed over 200,000 Japanese CIVILIANS days apart with the two atomic bombs.

That's a VERY cruel and bloody history between the US and Japan in a few short years.

So is the US still at war with Japan? SHOULD the US still be at war with Japan?

During WWII US and Japan were bitter enemies. Both lost millions to the other. in 1941, Japan launched a surprise attack against he US and sank several of their ships. he US retaliated and fought bloody battles with them in southeast Asia. The battles were bloody and Japan commited suicide attacks against advancing US forces. While Germany surrendered, Japan dug in and kept killing US soldiers. Then in 1945, the US killed over 200,000 Japanese CIVILIANS days apart with the two atomic bombs.

That's a VERY cruel and bloody history between the US and Japan in a few short years.

So is the US still at war with Japan? SHOULD the US still be at war with Japan?

Oh and Japan had several oppurtinities to surrender.

I'm not seeing the applicability.

There are no ongoing armed conflicts between the United States and Japan.

There is no millenia-long history of conflict between the United States and Japan.

Neither the United States nor Japan is attempting to eradicate the other, nor is there any long-term history of either side trying to eradicate the other.

Factually you're wrong that Japan had any opportunities to surrender. Yes, there were military leaders who know that making war with the United States was a bad idea, and there were some who wanted to end the war before the atomic bombs were dropped. However, the Japanese leadership was 100% opposed to the idea until Nagasaki was bombed.

What is ignored about the atomic bombings is that the United States had waged massive fire bombing campaigns against Japanese cities, with those campaigns result in more total deaths and more total destruction that bomb atomic bombs combined. The fire bombing of Tokyo killed almost as many as the bombing of Nagasaki and it had no affect at all on Japanese resolve to keep fighting. Japanese casualty projections in 1945 estimated that as many as 20 =million= Japanese would die in defense of Japan and even that wasn't enough to convince the Emperor to end the war. It was only when two atomic bombs were dropped, and fears (rightfully so -- there were several more bombs in the process of being assembled) that Hirohito finally surrendered.

"Obviously I'm convinced of the existence of G-d. I'm equally convinced that Atheists who've led good lives will be in Olam HaBa going "How the heck did I wind up in this place?!?" while Christians who've treated people like dirt will be in some other place asking the exact same question."

...then it's just another tragedy caused by Arab violence against Israel. Getting the Arabs to stop attacking Israel would be one way to stop these situations from happening in the first place.

Why not just end the dictatorship over the Palestinians?

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Many humanitarian aid ships include dual-use materials. As such, they are legitimate targets for the Israeli blockade. There is no reason, other than breaking the blockade of Gaza, that those ships need to enter Gazan waters directly. The blockade serves the legitimate security interests of Israel, so I have no problem with its continued enforcement.

Under which maritime provision does Israel conduct a blockade in the first place? I sort of remember a prerequisite that a state of war exist. However if a state of war exists there can be no terrorism only acts of war. Isn't there something about Jews being smart or is that just another antisemitic stereotype?

Jews stole the land. The owners want it back. That is all anyone needs to know about Israel. That is all there is to know about Israel.

Yup. Just our own country where =we= are in control of our destiny, not someone else.

Sounds like George Wallace talking about white America.

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And for the umpteenth time, if you'd like to be "chosen" as well, I can tell you where to go and what to do so you can also be "chosen". Funny how being "chosen" doesn't seem like such a hot idea to the people who complain about it ...

In any event in the modern world a country is for all of its citizens not merely for an artificial majority. That eliminates Israel as a western democracy. But then you folks keep describing it as a theocracy while objecting to the use of that word. Ever wonder?

Jews stole the land. The owners want it back. That is all anyone needs to know about Israel. That is all there is to know about Israel.

Either "might doesn't make right" and Jewish lands that were taken from us 2,000 years ago by Romans (then Christians and Muslims) remains ours,

There is your fucking problem right there. THAT is why most of the middle east hates Israel, right there.

You mean for lying about history? She recites jewish myth contradicted by real history. It really is a stereotype that jews are smart.

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I'll make you a deal, you can have your "Jewish state", if when a DNA SAMPLE proves any Arab is directly related to ANY of the Pharaohs of Egypt and get the Muslim and Koptic Christians to give the rights to the ancient Pyramids and tombs back to that blood line. You know damned well that isn't going to happen.

Then when you do that, I'll give back the land to the Native Americans. After all fair is fair.

Otherwise the past is the past. Same thing I am trying to tell Noony. But both of you ARE stuck in the past.

Which past? You refuse to tell me.

Jews stole the land. The owners want it back. That is all anyone needs to know about Israel. That is all there is to know about Israel.

As for Israel's defence of "We were here first: I wonder how many of it's American supporters will give their land back to the Native Americans?

When the Indians go to court over the treaties they almost always seek enforcement rather than overturning them. IOW, the Indians haven't asked for the land back. I can see their problem though. They never claimed ownership of the land. Stupid Europeans were paying them for something they didn't own. Maybe we retroactively convict them of a criminal scam.

The crux of the issue is the treaties. The US has them with the Indian tribes. Israel has NO treaty with the Palestinians. Without a peace treaty the right of resistance continues to exist.

They did however claim hunting and gathering rights. When they have brought this to court, complaining about being charged for hunting licenses, they get them free.

They would have another problem, the Indians never considered themselves a single group. They all considered themselves members of specific tribes. Today only a tribe as a legal entity could make a legal claim to whatever land they happened to roam but were forced to leave. I do not claim any kind of expertise but that would be only the Dakotas regarding the Black Hills. All the rest generally moved on before the fighting started. That is abandonment.

ALL of that pales to insignificance when compared to the real mistake they made. Instead of allying and killing off Europeans (a mistake made by the Palestinians too) they eagerly took sides in the New World conflicts of Europeans. In North America helped the highest bidder, French or English. Before the revolution the French and Indian war didn't make them any friends among the colonials.

But still they didn't learn. They chose sides in the US Civil War. It has been a while but ... I think it was the Cherokee who sided with the South. That didn't make friends with the Yankees.

Not just a clash of culture but a clash of stones with a 2000 year more advanced technology and that much more experience in using it. There is simply no way Indian culture had a chance of surviving. The entire way of life was often willingly abandoned to adopt European ways.

=====

The real problem with the Jews using this argument as though it were really as simple as Hollywood makes it out to be is "you did it so we can do it." That would also apply to slavery.

Jews stole the land. The owners want it back. That is all anyone needs to know about Israel. That is all there is to know about Israel.

As for Israel's defence of "We were here first: I wonder how many of it's American supporters will give their land back to the Native Americans?

I tried to point that out to BOTH Furry AND Noony, but that seems to be lost on both of them.

Pesky assholes like me prefer "the past is the past" and the only way forward is to not forget the past, but at the same time deal with the reality as it is now.

It ultimately boils down to humans forgetting that others are human. As soon as you do that, you can and do get stuck in the past.

Both Muslims and Jews think land was given to them. I don't care if either wants to claim a god or a tradition. What I see from these claims is death. Both missing the fact that HUMANS die.

I explained the inapplicability of it to you at least twice and now to her again in this thread.

In promoting it you are approving the enslavement of the Palestinians just because the US once had slavery. Whatever the US did in the 19th c. Israel can do today. Let them get a peace treaty with the Palestinians before fools try to compare it to the Indians.

Jews stole the land. The owners want it back. That is all anyone needs to know about Israel. That is all there is to know about Israel.

Up until 1948 100% of Jewish land was bought-and-paid-for by other Jews, but we were still attacked -- from the end of WWI until Independence, we were routinely subjected to terrorist attacks by the Arabs, leading up to Palestinians allying themselves with Adolf Hitler. This doesn't get all that much press because it's pretty damning on the part of the poor peace-loving Palestinians, but the facts are that Arab states were on the Axis (Germany for anyone educated in the U.S. after about 1980 ...) side in WWII and fought right along side Hitler's forces in a number of theatres, including within Mandatory Palestine.

Is that a picture from the negotiations for the Ha Avara agreement with Hitler? Damned Zionists will make deals with anyone.

Jews stole the land. The owners want it back. That is all anyone needs to know about Israel. That is all there is to know about Israel.

As for Israel's defence of "We were here first: I wonder how many of it's American supporters will give their land back to the Native Americans?

I tried to point that out to BOTH Furry AND Noony, but that seems to be lost on both of them.

Pesky assholes like me prefer "the past is the past" and the only way forward is to not forget the past, but at the same time deal with the reality as it is now.

It ultimately boils down to humans forgetting that others are human. As soon as you do that, you can and do get stuck in the past.

Both Muslims and Jews think land was given to them. I don't care if either wants to claim a god or a tradition. What I see from these claims is death. Both missing the fact that HUMANS die.

I explained the inapplicability of it to you at least twice and now to her again in this thread.

In promoting it you are approving the enslavement of the Palestinians just because the US once had slavery. Whatever the US did in the 19th c. Israel can do today. Let them get a peace treaty with the Palestinians before fools try to compare it to the Indians.

The land in question was owned by Egypt.

Treaties were signed between Israel and Egypt in 1979.

The other land in question was owned by Jordan.

Treaties were signed between Israel and Jordan in 1994.

So what's your beef if the owners of the land signed it away to Israel by treaty following years of war.

This is different how from treaties you argue in regard to the Indians?

____________________________________________________________
"I guess it's time to ask if you live under high voltage power transmission lines which have been shown to cause stimulation of the fantasy centers of the brain due to electromagnetic waves?" - Me

"God is omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent, - it says so right here on the label. If you have a mind capable of believing all three of these divine attributes simultaneously, I have a wonderful bargain for you. No checks please. Cash and in small bills." - Robert A Heinlein.

I will point out that the consequence of the absentee laws was that JNA ownership went from 5% before to 92% after making the criminal theft to be 87% of Mandate Palestine by ISRAELI numbers.

JNF ownership of Israel is 13 or 14% of the land, depending on how you round the numbers.

As regards confiscating lands which were held by hostile Arabs, that's the way war works -- you wage war and lose, you keep on losing. You don't get a "do-over". Arabs who were hostile to Israel =left=, of their own free will, as part of a deal they made with the Arab states that attacked Israel. The deal was "get out of the way, and we'll give you the Jewish lands we take." Those Arabs freely accepted that bargain and they lost. I'm sorry they lost, but that's the way war goes.

I am not talking about Arabs. I am talking about Palestinians but you know that and prefer to pretend otherwise. The Palestinians did not engage in any war against Israel although they did fight back against the terrorists of the Stern Gang, Haaganah and Irgun. That is quite reasonable. It was the Brits who designated them terrorists. They bombed markets to kill women and children, kidnapped and hanged British soldiers and blew up the King David Hotel. And jewish morality says that was OK because they sent a warning about the bomb -- there is even a plaque on the hotel honoring them. It is much smaller than originally intended because the Brits found out about it.

Trivia: Jewish genius invented the car bomb.

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I'm going to explain this to you the way I've explained it countless times, not that I expect it to make a difference.

You have recited a mess of jewish fiction which is contrary to what really happened, true. You have tried to blame Palestinians for the actions of Arabs. Matter of fact Arabs had piss little to do with it. Mainly it was Egyptians, Syrians and Jordanians while Iraq sent a token force.Educated people do not confuse all the different nationalities and histories as "arabs" like the uneducated do.

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Either "might doesn't make right" and Jewish lands that were taken from us 2,000 years ago by Romans (then Christians and Muslims) remains ours, or "might makes right" and the country is now ours. Which ever way you take it, the land is ours. Either because it was ours before the Romans came and it remains ours to this very day, or it's ours because we took it. Personally, I prefer the former because the later justifies having war after war after war. In my experience of Western democracies, aboriginal claim do seem to have a fair bit of weight, and that's the basis for Jewish claim -- we've been there since the Bronze Age, which is a pretty damned long time. I have a slew of other arguments if you don't like this one, but they all lead to one inescapable result -- Israel is ours.

There you go again with ahistorical nonsense. Jews were only Judeans unless you know better than Flavius Josephus which I doubt. That is what he said. He never connected the name with the Yahweh cult. He specifically mentioned the Samaritans and Galileans as having been conquered and forced to convert to the Yahweh cult. You should know that. I presume you do know that and prefer to spout long discredited jewish mythology instead.

No historical claim can possibly go beyond the borders of historical (not mythical) Judea not that the world recognizes historical claims. You can mutter about aboriginal claims all you want. Show me the ones honored in law rather than in pop culture.

It does not cover the ancient coastal city-states but is completely limited to land-locked Judea. Samaria was conquered as was the Galilee. One one hand I have the writing of Josephus. On the other I have unprovenenced jewish traditional BS. Which would a rational person accept? Your answer will establish if you are or are not a rational person.

Please do not get me wrong. I want you to post any credible ancient source or science which supports your position. I note that despite my previous requests you have continued to post as though your book of magical tales were a credible source.

The Romans never did more than annex Judea to the empire with the AGREEMENT of Herod who was the civil ruler of Judea. That made it lawful by the rules of the time. If you have a gripe exhume his body and desecrate it. Wait! You already did that in 73. I almost forgot about that.

And of course we all know ALL the ancient mentions of the expulsion are only from Jerusalem not from Judea. Yet you continue to spread the jewish lie that it was the entire land. See Shlomo Sand for currently in print comments on that issue.

As for aboriginal claims, I fail to see how, by your own fairytales, a bunch of flea-ridden goatherds from Ur make a claim to even Judea. By your own fairytales Joshua's conquest is inferior to the aboriginal Palestinians.

In real history, not jewish fairytales, Palestinians appear some four centuries before the Judeans. Their claim is obviously superior if aboriginal claims matters. Also by real history the claims of the Samaritans and Galileans are superior to the claims of the Judeans regardless of their present religion which has no standing in any land claim.

The world was never a primitive as you Herzlites pretend. It was only the Judeans who were backwards, primitive and largely illiterate.

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Finally, in regards to your comment about banning -- there is nothing wrong with DISAGREEING. Free speech should protect DISAGREEMENT, but free speech has no obligation towards outright lying, deception and deceit, particular when those lies are used to foment hatred and violence, which yours do. Either RRS is a website that is based on hard evidence,

That is why everyone rejects your book of magical tales. It does not count as evidence in any rational discussion. Herodotus and Josephus do count which are online so you have no excuse for not reading them.

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with the objective of creating a more just and humanistic society, or it isn't. If RRS is just a place for people who believe in god and/or gods to do battle with those who don't, so be it. But that does not appear to be the case.

Where have I heard that riff before? I remember, it was Josephus whom I quoted. Anyone who disagrees with even the most outlandish claims of Jews has malevolent intent and hates Jews. You are spouting easily refuted nonsense direct from your favorite book of fairytales that is both in conflict with real history and negated by archaeology. I reject it and you, just like Josephus, attack me for rejecting your transparent BS.

You point is simply that I reject your nonsense in favor of real history and therefore I should be banned because I disagree with you because you are a Jew(ess?). That is not rational. That is the same riff Jews have had all through history. Rational people are laughing at you.

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This is obviously Brian Sapient's party and he can do with it as he sees fit, but I happen to believe that he has a mission beyond merely providing a forum in which people shout at each other and/or spout lies in order to further their claims. If I didn't believe that, I wouldn't be spending my time here.

As I have Herodotus and Josephus among others to support my position and you have only a long discredited book of magical fairytales, he will calibrate himself by his actions.

I have Prof. Shlomo Sand to refute your nonsense about a Jewish people. I have the dictionary on my side regarding the different meanings of "nation" and European history on my side as to when the political meaning was invented.

I also have haaretz.com and jpost.com on my side for current information on Israel. Those are the liberal and conservative sides of every issue. I also have a couple gigs of saved files from them although you may be in luck if my filing system can't find a particular article to back up what I remember.

So tell me, as Israel has no civil marriage nor civil burial and requires non-Jews to carry papers identifying themselves by their religion, why do you think Israel should be considered any different from Iran or Egypt?

Jews stole the land. The owners want it back. That is all anyone needs to know about Israel. That is all there is to know about Israel.

If Islamist movements come to power all over the region, they should express their debt of gratitude to their bête noire, Israel.

Without the active or passive help of successive Israeli governments, they may not have been able to realize their dreams.

That is true in Gaza, in Beirut, in Cairo, and even in Tehran.

Let’s take the example of Hamas.

All over the Arab lands, dictators have been faced with a dilemma. They could easily close down all political and civic activities, but they could not close the mosques. In the mosques people could congregate in order to pray, organize charities, and, secretly, set up political organizations. Before the days of Twitter and Facebook, that was the only way to reach masses of people.

One of the dictators faced with this dilemma was the Israel military governor in the occupied Palestinian territories. Right from the beginning, he forbade any political activity. Even peace activists went to prison. Advocates of nonviolence were deported. Civic centers were closed down. Only the mosques remained open. There people could meet.

But this went beyond tolerance. The General Security Service (known as Shin Bet or Shabak) had an active interest in the flourishing of the mosques. People who pray five times a day, they thought, have no time to build bombs.

The main enemy, as laid down by Shabak, was the dreadful PLO, led by that monster, Yasser Arafat. The PLO was a secular organization, with many prominent Christian members, aiming at a “nonsectarian” Palestinian state. They were the enemies of the Islamists, who were talking about a pan-Islamic Caliphate.

Turning the Palestinians toward Islam, it was thought, would weaken the PLO and its main faction, Fatah. So everything was done to help the Islamic movement discreetly.

It was a very successful policy, and the security people congratulated themselves on their cleverness, when something untoward happened. In December 1987, the first intifada broke out. The mainstream Islamists had to compete with more radical groupings. Within days, they transformed themselves into the Islamic Resistance Movement (acronym: Hamas) and became the most dangerous foes of Israel. Yet it took Shabak more than a year before it arrested Sheik Ahmad Yassin, the Hamas leader. In order to fight this new menace, Israel came to an agreement with the PLO in Oslo.

And now, irony of ironies, Hamas is about to join the PLO and take part in a Palestinian National Unity government. They really should send us a message of shukran (“thanks&rdquo.

Our part in the rise of Hezbollah is less direct, but no less effective.

When Ariel Sharon rolled into Lebanon in 1982, his troops had to cross the mainly Shi’ite South. The Israeli soldiers were received as liberators — liberators from the PLO, which had turned this area into a state within a state.

Following the troops in my private car, trying to reach the front, I had to traverse about a dozen Shi’ite villages. In each one I was detained by the villagers, who insisted that I have coffee in their homes.

Neither Sharon nor anyone else paid much attention to the Shi’ites. In the federation of autonomous ethnic-religious communities that is called Lebanon, the Shi’ites were the most downtrodden and powerless.

However, the Israelis outstayed their welcome. It took the Shi’ites just a few weeks to realize that they had no intention of leaving. So, for the first time in their history, they rebelled. The main political group, Amal (“hope&rdquo, started small armed actions. When the Israelis did not take the hint, operations multiplied and turned into a full-fledged guerrilla war.

If Israel had gotten out then (as Haolam Hazeh demanded), not much harm would have been done. But it remained for a full 18 years, ample time for Hezbollah to turn into an efficient fighting machine, earn the admiration of the Arab masses everywhere, take over the leadership of the Shi’ite community, and become the most powerful force in Lebanese politics.

They, too, owe us a big shukran.

The case of the Muslim Brotherhood is even more complex.

The organization was founded in 1928, 20 years before the state of Israel. Its members volunteered to fight us in 1948. They are passionately pan-Islamic, and the Palestinian plight is close to their hearts.

As the Israeli-Palestinian conflict worsened, the popularity of the Brothers grew. Since the 1967 war, in which Egypt lost Sinai, and even more after the separate peace agreement with Israel, they stoked the deep-seated resentment of the masses in Egypt and all over the Arab world. The assassination of Anwar al-Sadat was not their doing, but they rejoiced.

Their opposition to the peace agreement with Israel was not only an Islamist but also an authentic Egyptian reaction. Most Egyptians felt cheated and betrayed by Israel. The Camp David agreement had an important Palestinian component, without which the agreement would have been impossible for Egypt. Sadat, a visionary, looked at the big picture and believed that the agreement would quickly lead to a Palestinian state. Menachem Begin, a lawyer, saw to the fine print. Generations of Jews have been brought up on the Talmud, which is mainly a compilation of legal precedents, and their minds have been honed by legalistic arguments. Not for nothing are Jewish lawyers in demand the world over.

Actually, the agreement made no mention of a Palestinian state, only of autonomy, phrased in a way that allowed Israel to continue the occupation. That was not what the Egyptians had been led to believe, and their resentment was palpable. Egyptians are convinced that their country is the leader of the Arab world and bears a special responsibility for every part of it. They cannot bear to be seen as the betrayers of their poor, helpless Palestinian cousins.

Long before he was overthrown, Hosni Mubarak was despised as an Israeli lackey, paid by the U.S. For Egyptians, his despicable role in the Israeli blockade of a million and a half Palestinians in the Gaza Strip was particularly shameful.

Since their beginnings in the 1920s, Brotherhood leaders and activists have been hanged, imprisoned, tortured, and otherwise persecuted. Their anti-regime credentials are impeccable. Their stand for the Palestinians contributed a lot to this image.

Had Israel made peace with the Palestinian people somewhere along the line, the Brotherhood would have lost much of its luster. As it is, it is emerging from the present democratic elections as the central force in Egyptian politics.

Shukran, Israel.

Let’s not forget the Islamic Republic of Iran.

They owe us something, too. Quite a lot, actually.

In 1951, in the first democratic elections in an Islamic country in the region, Mohammad Mossadegh was elected prime minister. The shah, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, who had been installed by the British during World War II, was thrown out, and Mossadegh nationalized the country’s vital oil industry. Until then, the British had robbed the Iranian people, paying a pittance for the black gold.

Two years later, in a coup organized by the British MI6 and the American CIA, the shah was brought back and returned the oil to the hated British and their partners. Israel probably had no part in the coup, but under the restored regime of the shah, Israel prospered. Israelis made fortunes selling weapons to the Iranian army. Israeli Shabak agents trained the shah’s dreaded secret police, Savak. It was widely believed that they also taught them torture techniques. The shah helped to build and pay for a pipeline for Iranian oil from Eilat to Ashkelon. Israeli generals traveled through Iran to Iraqi Kurdistan, where they helped the rebellion against Baghdad.

At the time, the Israeli leadership was cooperating with the South African apartheid regime in developing nuclear arms. The two offered the shah partnership in the effort, so that Iran, too, would become a nuclear power.

Before that partnership became effective, the detested ruler was overthrown by the Islamic revolution of February 1979. Since then, the hatred of the Great Satan (the U.S.) and the Little Satan (us) has played a major role in the propaganda of the Islamic regime. It has helped to keep the loyalty of the masses, and now Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is using it to bolster his rule.

It seems that all Iranian factions — including the opposition — now support the Iranian effort to obtain a nuclear bomb of their own, ostensibly to deter an Israeli nuclear attack. (This week, the chief of the Mossad pronounced that an Iranian nuclear bomb would not constitute an “existential danger” to Israel.)

Where would the Islamic Republic be without Israel? So they owe us a big “thank you,” too.

However, let us not be too megalomaniacal. Israel has contributed a lot to the Islamist awakening. But it is not the only — or even the main — contributor.

Strange as it may appear, obscurantist religious fundamentalism seems to express the zeitgeist. A British nun-turned-historian, Karen Armstrong, has written an interesting book following the three fundamentalist movements in the Muslim world, in the U.S., and in Israel. It shows a clear pattern: all these divergent movements — Muslim, Christian, and Jewish — have passed through almost identical and simultaneous stages.

At present, all Israel is in turmoil because the powerful Orthodox community is compelling women in many parts of the country to sit separately in the back of buses, like blacks in the good old days in Alabama, and use separate sidewalks on one side of the streets. Male religious soldiers are forbidden by their rabbis to listen to women soldiers singing. In Orthodox neighborhoods, women are compelled to swathe their bodies in garments that reveal nothing but their faces and hands, even in temperatures of 85 degrees Fahrenheit and above. An 8-year-old girl from a religious family was spat upon in the street because her clothes were not “modest” enough. In counter-demonstrations, secular women waved posters saying “Tehran is here!”

Perhaps some day a fundamentalist Israel will make peace with a fundamentalist Muslim world, under the auspices of a fundamentalist American president.

Unless we do something to stop the process before it is too late.

Jews stole the land. The owners want it back. That is all anyone needs to know about Israel. That is all there is to know about Israel.

I explained the inapplicability of it to you at least twice and now to her again in this thread.

In promoting it you are approving the enslavement of the Palestinians just because the US once had slavery. Whatever the US did in the 19th c. Israel can do today. Let them get a peace treaty with the Palestinians before fools try to compare it to the Indians.

The land in question was owned by Egypt.

Treaties were signed between Israel and Egypt in 1979.

The other land in question was owned by Jordan.

Treaties were signed between Israel and Jordan in 1994.

So what's your beef if the owners of the land signed it away to Israel by treaty following years of war.

This is different how from treaties you argue in regard to the Indians?

The land in question was OWNED by the people who held title to it. The land was governed by different rules.

In 1979 sovereignty not ownership was returned to Egypt. The Jordanian 1948 claim to sovereignty over the West Bank was recognized by only one country in the world, Egypt. It claim of sovereignty over Jerusalem was recognized by no country not even Egypt. The world agreed the West Bank belonged to the Palestinians not to Jordan. Palestine has existed for at least 2500 years, 400 years longer than Judea has been in real history.

You confuse, I hope not deliberately, the entirely different issues of ownership and sovereignty. When Herzl's delegation to Istanbul asked for the Jews to be given Palestine (funny how he knew the name of a place that did not exist) he was told, "I only rule the land. I do not own it." It was not his to give.

The US and Indians issue is much more complicated and involves legal issues all of whose complex details I cannot address. That said you will note in the US there is mainly "government" land west of the Mississippi which was ceded by Indian and Mexican treaty. All other government land including in the east was bought and paid for as per the constitutional provision covering eminent domain. To this day if you are an American you can have most any part of the remaining government land (if not protected by other laws) if you can make productive use of it. That is, FREE. That is what gold claims and homesteading were all about. It was the legal device for the land rushes. Government owned but immediately transferred to lawfully regulated claimants.

As such government ownership is a legal technicality not a fact as in personal ownership. The main purpose was and is to regulate future ownership and prevent armed land grabs and such as had happened in the Republic of Texas. The only exceptions to this have been almost all military bases and national parks. There is a shale oil deposit that is rumored to dwarf Canada's and the entire middle east in reserves as one of the exceptions. Now if you want to bring up something I have not covered fine. I may or may not be able to address it. I am not a lawyer, I just play one on TV.

In every case an Indian treaty ceded land as in ownership to the US in accordance with US law. In every case the US had already claimed and maintained sovereignty over that land. The US was imposing its law upon the natives.

Israel has NO peace treaty with the Palestinians. Absent that there is no place to even begin to confuse sovereignty with ownership. Ownership is a matter of deeded title completely independent of sovereignty. There are records of this going as far back as Ur. In other words as far back as we have found writing. We find such records in every ancient civilization worthy of the name.

Sidebar: There are no such records (or any records at all for that matter) found in bibleland regarding biblical Israel.One has to wonder what excuse the believers will make for the absence.

Jews stole the land. The owners want it back. That is all anyone needs to know about Israel. That is all there is to know about Israel.

Yup. Just our own country where =we= are in control of our destiny, not someone else.

Sounds like George Wallace talking about white America.

There are 5.7 million Jews in the Middle East. There are 340 million people in the Arab League, which covers Northern Africa (Libya, for example) all the way through the Middle East and over into Asia (Afghanistan, for example). That's a total of 345.7 million people, of which 1.6 percent are Jews.

In contrast, there were 159 million whites and 19 million blacks in the 1960 US Census, for a total of 178 million people, of which 10.6 percent were blacks.

George Wallace represented 89.4 percent of the population which was trying to control a 10.6 percent minority. What you're proposing is that a minority which is 6 times SMALLER has to cow-tow to the wishes of 98.4 percent of the combined Jewish and Arab population.

You're nucking futs, which seems to be the overall consensus of opinion here. That you'd use a white supremacist, who was a member of the majority group to claim a group of people who are outnumbered 60+ to 1, to claim =we= are somehow engaged in racist behavior is beyond the pale. Racism is only possible for a group that is in power, not a group that is repeatedly attacked and threatened with elimination on a regular basis. That we've managed to avoid being exterminated by the surrounding Arab states (and Persians -- Iranians aren't Arabs ...) is a miracle.

"Obviously I'm convinced of the existence of G-d. I'm equally convinced that Atheists who've led good lives will be in Olam HaBa going "How the heck did I wind up in this place?!?" while Christians who've treated people like dirt will be in some other place asking the exact same question."

Racism is only possible for a group that is in power, not a group that is repeatedly attacked and threatened with elimination on a regular basis.

No, any person or group can be racist.

FurryCatHerder wrote:

That we've managed to avoid being exterminated by the surrounding Arab states (and Persians -- Iranians aren't Arabs ...) is a miracle.

I mean, it's mostly due to Israel's strong military, nuclear weapons, and alliances with nations who have strong militaries (like the United States).

The biggest problem I have with Israel is that the Israeli government treats Palestinians as second-class citizens. Not all Palestinians are terrorists, not all Muslims are terrorists, and not all of those who hate Israel are terrorists. This is similar to problem in the US of all Muslims being treated like terrorists because of 9/11.

Racism is only possible for a group that is in power, not a group that is repeatedly attacked and threatened with elimination on a regular basis.

No, any person or group can be racist.

Racial discrimination without power is an idea. Racial "bad thoughts" without power is is less than an idea.

Now, you give someone who doesn't like (insert racial minority here) the power to do something about it, and you've got yourself some major injustice going on.

blacklight915 wrote:

FurryCatHerder wrote:

That we've managed to avoid being exterminated by the surrounding Arab states (and Persians -- Iranians aren't Arabs ...) is a miracle.

I mean, it's mostly due to Israel's strong military, nuclear weapons, and alliances with nations who have strong militaries (like the United States).

The biggest problem I have with Israel is that the Israeli government treats Palestinians as second-class citizens. Not all Palestinians are terrorists, not all Muslims are terrorists, and not all of those who hate Israel are terrorists. This is similar to problem in the US of all Muslims being treated like terrorists because of 9/11.

First, we've been at the "survival game" for about 4,000 years. Even if you don't believe my own personal family history book, we've been at the "survival game" for at least 2,100 years. And that's a lot longer than nuclear weapons have been around, not that there is any proof Israel has any.

Secondly, when a government (the PA and the PLO before it) has members who've historically declared that the murder of Jews or the destruction of the State of Israel is an imperative, I'd say that the Right of Self Defense means that anything short of turning them into Soylent Green is fair game.

Learn to criticize the people who are teaching their children that if they strap bombs to their bodies, go into civilian gathering places, and blow up innocent civilians that their pet deity will give them free goodies. There is a difference between good and evil. You don't have to believe in G-d to believe that.

"Obviously I'm convinced of the existence of G-d. I'm equally convinced that Atheists who've led good lives will be in Olam HaBa going "How the heck did I wind up in this place?!?" while Christians who've treated people like dirt will be in some other place asking the exact same question."

Jews stole the land. The owners want it back. That is all anyone needs to know about Israel. That is all there is to know about Israel.

THAT is why she wont talk to you. That tribal bullshit right there. "My land" same shit when she says it "my land".

Deeded fee simple ownership is exactly the same claim Jews invoke against Germany. It is what Palestinians invoke against the Jews for their theft of private property.

What am I supposed to do? Ignore rights in private property? Please answer the question.

What you don't have to do is dwell in the past.

You are NOT consistent with that mantra anymore than Jews are.

When you look at Native Americans the same thing was done to them. Where are you not telling Native Americans they should fight back.

I do NOT side with any current incursion of Jewish advancement. I am strictly talking about the fact that they came back in the first place after WW2. You are completely delusional to think they are going anywhere in that respect. Anymore than Native Americans could have changed the fact that Europeans moved in.

But they too look at that region and say "I was here first" And they were because Islam was not invented until much later in history. And humans existed in that region way before either of those camps. The Sumerians and Canaanites polytheism was there long before both.

So my advice to both sides is to STOP the dogmatism of "my land" and 'history starts here" and try what the founders of America did, in putting common ground first, and not common dogma or common politics.

The reality neither wants to face is that times change, power shifts happen. HOW you deal with the future, is to remember the past so you don't repeat it, and look to the future collectively, beyond labels.

Religion infects politics even in the states, but what it does have is a secular constitution that prevents monopolies when that society seeks to prevent those monopolies.

My advice to Palestinians and Israelis is to skip the labels, and remember that death is death and death is final, no mater who you are or who you support.

"We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus -- and nonbelievers."ObamaCheck out my poetry here on Rational Responders Like my poetry thread on Facebook under BrianJames Rational Poet also on twitter under Brianrrs37

All the previous said, you say I reek of it. Please give me two or three examples from what I have posted and tell me exactly why they are antisemitic.

I'm assuming it is possible to be anti-Zionist without being anti-semitic. If so, you are not anti-semitic but you are anti-Zionist. Based upon what I've read of your posts, you don't dislike all Jews but you do dislike anyone backing up the Zionist philosophy/ideology. I'll provide some quotes:

A_Nony_Mouse wrote:

She is one of them?! Fat lot of business a zionist has talking about morality.

A_Nony_Mouse wrote:

He has yet to fully grasp that failing to damn Zionism is like praising the Nazis or the Klan.

Anti-zionism is a moral imperative.

Here is the first result for the Google search "define: Zionism":

Zionism: A movement for (originally) the reestablishment and (now) the development and protection of a Jewish nation in what is now Israel. It was established as a political organization in 1897 under Theodor Herzl, and was later led by Chaim Weizmann

I know very little about Zionism but wanting to settle a piece of land is not immoral. Of course, forcing those already living on the land to leave and then settling it would be immoral.

Before any theist complains about my lack of authoritative morality, I say it is immoral because it assumes one group of people is more valuable than another. In addition, forcing people from their homes causes lots of distress and suffering. On a pragmatic level, making one group of people homeless to give another group a home doesn't solve the problem of groups of people without a home.

Learn to criticize the people who are teaching their children that if they strap bombs to their bodies, go into civilian gathering places, and blow up innocent civilians that their pet deity will give them free goodies.

So the fact that some Palestinians are terrorists justifies taking away certain rights from ALL of them?

FurryCatHerder wrote:

Secondly, when a government (the PA and the PLO before it) has members who've historically declared that the murder of Jews or the destruction of the State of Israel is an imperative, I'd say that the Right of Self Defense means that anything short of turning them into Soylent Green is fair game.

There is a big difference between the government of a country and the people that live in that country. The fact that a country's government wants to destroy Israel does not justify killing random people that live in that country.

FurryCatHerder wrote:

You don't have to believe in G-d to believe that.

I agree. But, you claim that unless I believe in your God my conceptions of good and evil are meaningless.

I like Karen Armstrong too, but she is to take with some grain of salt...

I don't remember hearing of her before this op-ed piece. Do you have any recommendations from her writings?

One of her better books was "A History of God" from 1994. She has written about 12 books.

She is an ex-nun. When she wrote this book she was not buying the fantasies so much. Later she fell into buying that there still is a higher power of some kind in a mystical sort of way.

____________________________________________________________
"I guess it's time to ask if you live under high voltage power transmission lines which have been shown to cause stimulation of the fantasy centers of the brain due to electromagnetic waves?" - Me

"God is omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent, - it says so right here on the label. If you have a mind capable of believing all three of these divine attributes simultaneously, I have a wonderful bargain for you. No checks please. Cash and in small bills." - Robert A Heinlein.

Yup. Just our own country where =we= are in control of our destiny, not someone else.

Sounds like George Wallace talking about white America.

There are 5.7 million Jews in the Middle East.

A place which every historian who has investigated the matter, repeat EVERY historian, has concluded the Judeans either voluntarily left or converted to more successful religions. Amateur historians can come to the same conclusion using google. Again the HISTORIAN, who is both jewish and Israeli, Prof Shlomo Sand says the same thing.

Quote:

There are 340 million people in the Arab League, which covers Northern Africa (Libya, for example) all the way through the Middle East and over into Asia (Afghanistan, for example). That's a total of 345.7 million people, of which 1.6 percent are Jews.

No one but zionists accepts the fiction that Jews are other then a religion. You claimed you wanted academic references. I gave you, The Invention of the Jewish People by Prof. Shlomo Sand. You ignore what you claim you wanted. Why did you try the bluff of academic references when even a cursory review of what I have posted would show you didn't have a change of winning it?

If comparing nationalities, there is no Arab nationality except for the Saudis.

If you want to talk culture you are going to have to break out the various cultures of the Jews. www.haaretz.com/print-edition/opinion/removing-hypocrisy-1.281846 "The High Court justices made some emphatic statements last Thursday when they issued a precedent-setting ruling banning the segregation of Ashkenazi and Sephardi girls at the Beit Ya'akov Girls' School in Emmanuel. The right to a separate education based on ethnic affiliation is not an absolute right when it clashes with the right to equality, the judges ruled." The RIGHT to a separate ethnic education, different Israeli Jews have different cultures.

North Africa is not in the middle east. Egypt is in North Africa not the middle east. Even the most generous (but still erroneous) usage of the term ends in the east at the border of Iran. Afghanistan and countries further east are obviously not to be counted either.

You do not appear to be able to use words by their accepted definition. You do insist upon trying to get away with comparing apples and oranges. Your numbers are totally bogus. Your geography is nonsense. Your entire argument is long-ridiculed zionists propaganda.

If you think you have a rational response you are invited to present it.

Quote:

In contrast, there were 159 million whites and 19 million blacks in the 1960 US Census, for a total of 178 million people, of which 10.6 percent were blacks.

George Wallace represented 89.4 percent of the population which was trying to control a 10.6 percent minority. What you're proposing is that a minority which is 6 times SMALLER has to cow-tow to the wishes of 98.4 percent of the combined Jewish and Arab population.

I was talking about the racist nature of your post. Zionist bigotry is legendary. It is rare to get one live who is so lacking in shame as to post it publicly.

But continuing with the analysis, Wallace was talking about the US, a single country. You think people are too dumb to notice you are not talking about a single country. People are not as dumb as you think they are.

A single country would talk about Israel and the condition of the non-Jews in Israel as not that much different from the blacks in the George Wallace's state. But he didn't make them carry papers.

Quote:

You're nucking futs, which seems to be the overall consensus of opinion here. That you'd use a white supremacist, who was a member of the majority group to claim a group of people who are outnumbered 60+ to 1, to claim =we= are somehow engaged in racist behavior is beyond the pale. Racism is only possible for a group that is in power, not a group that is repeatedly attacked and threatened with elimination on a regular basis. That we've managed to avoid being exterminated by the surrounding Arab states (and Persians -- Iranians aren't Arabs ...) is a miracle.

Lets see there are Arab leaders and there are Jew leaders. There are Arab armies and there is a Jew army. May I suggest those are examples of Jew racism? (Yes, I know neither Saudis nor Jews are a race. Both are majority Caucasians.)

The group in power in a single country is of course the one that is a consistent comparison. In which case it is the Jews in Israel against the down-trodden non-Jews in Israel. That is a constant topic in the Israeli media and is very well known to Israelis unless they are suffering from Helen Keller syndrome.

It is also rather disgusting reading people whining about the consequences of living in Palestine when it was their own free choice to do so or that of their parents or grandparents. If you don't like it curse yourself for your choice or them for their choice. You can leave any time. No one is forcing you to stay there. No one in their right mind could have expected anything else than exists today as a consequence of the european adventurism in Palestine.

Zionists knew it would be like it is. Zionists were fully aware of what the consequences of their actions would be. Yet zionists whine like they are innocent children instead of manning up to the consequences of your free will choice of going there.

The Crusaders didn't whine about how they were treated. They knew what it would be like. Adults don't whine. Adult don't post the stupid propaganda (hasbara, isreality) you did.

Jews stole the land. The owners want it back. That is all anyone needs to know about Israel. That is all there is to know about Israel.

I explained the inapplicability of it to you at least twice and now to her again in this thread.

In promoting it you are approving the enslavement of the Palestinians just because the US once had slavery. Whatever the US did in the 19th c. Israel can do today. Let them get a peace treaty with the Palestinians before fools try to compare it to the Indians.

The land in question was owned by Egypt.

Treaties were signed between Israel and Egypt in 1979.

The other land in question was owned by Jordan.

Treaties were signed between Israel and Jordan in 1994.

So what's your beef if the owners of the land signed it away to Israel by treaty following years of war.

This is different how from treaties you argue in regard to the Indians?

The land in question was OWNED by the people who held title to it. The land was governed by different rules.

In 1979 sovereignty not ownership was returned to Egypt. The Jordanian 1948 claim to sovereignty over the West Bank was recognized by only one country in the world, Egypt.

Who else would they have given sovereignty to?

A_Nony_Mouse wrote:

It claim of sovereignty over Jerusalem was recognized by no country not even Egypt.

Why is that a surprise? All of them want the damn place.

If if was blown to bits with a nuke, they would build altars and wailing walls at the closest point they could get.

A_Nony_Mouse wrote:

The world agreed the West Bank belonged to the Palestinians not to Jordan.

The world aka the UN did the same for Israel and you don't respect that, so obviously those in that part of the world don't much care what the world thinks do they?

A_Nony_Mouse wrote:

Palestine has existed for at least 2500 years, 400 years longer than Judea has been in real history.

As parts of many defunct nations, including the supposed Jews of Judea.

So what? There are still tribes all over N & S America that have existed long before the white man stole the land.

I'm of the view that the Northern Kingdom was never part of an ancient Israel. I don't use that word to describe those living in Judah. They were Judahites.

Israel was something else, and proof does not exist as to what gods they worshiped other than Canaanite gods including Asherah, which those in Judah also thought of as the Queen of heaven.

Those coming from Judah I see as no different than anyone else from the area.

A_Nony_Mouse wrote:

You confuse, I hope not deliberately, the entirely different issues of ownership and sovereignty. When Herzl's delegation to Istanbul asked for the Jews to be given Palestine (funny how he knew the name of a place that did not exist) he was told, "I only rule the land. I do not own it." It was not his to give.

If we compare as you and others do the American Indians and the mid-east one can not do so fairly.

The Indians were Nations. No they had no titles filed for land, its not what they did. They owned all of North America before the white man stole it.

Though some sold out willingly.

Wars were fought and land was taken. Indians were forced to move. The sovereignty and the ownership of all of it passed to the white man by force. After all they were savages as far as the white man was concerned.

A_Nony_Mouse wrote:

The US and Indians issue is much more complicated and involves legal issues all of whose complex details I cannot address. That said you will note in the US there is mainly "government" land west of the Mississippi which was ceded by Indian and Mexican treaty. All other government land including in the east was bought and paid for as per the constitutional provision covering eminent domain. To this day if you are an American you can have most any part of the remaining government land (if not protected by other laws) if you can make productive use of it. That is, FREE. That is what gold claims and homesteading were all about. It was the legal device for the land rushes. Government owned but immediately transferred to lawfully regulated claimants.

As such government ownership is a legal technicality not a fact as in personal ownership. The main purpose was and is to regulate future ownership and prevent armed land grabs and such as had happened in the Republic of Texas. The only exceptions to this have been almost all military bases and national parks. There is a shale oil deposit that is rumored to dwarf Canada's and the entire middle east in reserves as one of the exceptions. Now if you want to bring up something I have not covered fine. I may or may not be able to address it. I am not a lawyer, I just play one on TV.

I agree, you simplify this far too much. It's not that easy.

I grew up in the US SouthWest. The Indians were forced to agree to treaties back then, or be eliminated more or less.

US law was forced on them. When did they willingly as a general rule agree to be subjected to US law.

Not that the current generation objects to making money off the white man gamblers, or in some cases oil.

A_Nony_Mouse wrote:

In every case an Indian treaty ceded land as in ownership to the US in accordance with US law. In every case the US had already claimed and maintained sovereignty over that land. The US was imposing its law upon the natives.

When did the Indians who were either attacked or attacked the invading white hordes at the time agree to be US citizens? Not unitl later did any of that happen.

A_Nony_Mouse wrote:

Israel has NO peace treaty with the Palestinians. Absent that there is no place to even begin to confuse sovereignty with ownership. Ownership is a matter of deeded title completely independent of sovereignty. There are records of this going as far back as Ur. In other words as far back as we have found writing. We find such records in every ancient civilization worthy of the name.

The Palestinains as I pointed out were citizens of Egypt and Jordan. They signed treaties.

Does every ethnic group in the US sign a peace treaty?

Jordan for obvious reasons wants no part of Fatah. How many attempts on King Hussein's life did they make? How many times did they rise to violence?

A_Nony_Mouse wrote:

Sidebar: There are no such records (or any records at all for that matter) found in bibleland regarding biblical Israel.One has to wonder what excuse the believers will make for the absence.

I agree, that nothing found in the Northern Kingdom called Israel would ever lead you to consider they worshiped a single god named Yahweh.

In the smaller kingdom called Israel, only the OT supports they worshiped only the Yahweh, and it does a poor job of that. The artifacts suggest otherwise.

The problem here is everyone needs to learn to live in the world without killing one another.

The Israelis are stupid in their methods. Stop shooting at us and we will give you your freedom.

The Palestinians don't stop.

A better way is to simply give it to them and move the fuck on.

____________________________________________________________
"I guess it's time to ask if you live under high voltage power transmission lines which have been shown to cause stimulation of the fantasy centers of the brain due to electromagnetic waves?" - Me

"God is omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent, - it says so right here on the label. If you have a mind capable of believing all three of these divine attributes simultaneously, I have a wonderful bargain for you. No checks please. Cash and in small bills." - Robert A Heinlein.

The biggest problem I have with Israel is that the Israeli government treats Palestinians as second-class citizens. Not all Palestinians are terrorists, not all Muslims are terrorists, and not all of those who hate Israel are terrorists. This is similar to problem in the US of all Muslims being treated like terrorists because of 9/11.

From the beginning the zionists knew their survival depended upon have a real country with a real military backing them up. First they tried Stalin but that fell through for undocumented reasons. Both countries were openly communist at the time.

Then the French sponsored them. Finally that idiot Lyndon Johnson sponsored and protected them.

Without foreign power sponsorship and protection would have vanished long ago because the Jews would have left in droves.

There would be a million fewer "jews" in Israel if Germany, Canada, Australia and the US had not given in to jewish demands to stop accepting emigrating jewish Russians, to make them go to Israel. Russians are smart people. Barely 5% of them were choosing Israel before Israel got the doors to other countries closed.

Jews stole the land. The owners want it back. That is all anyone needs to know about Israel. That is all there is to know about Israel.

First, we've been at the "survival game" for about 4,000 years. Even if you don't believe my own personal family history book,

or the established historical record

Quote:

we've been at the "survival game" for at least 2,100 years. And that's a lot longer than nuclear weapons have been around, not that there is any proof Israel has any.

Preserving the RELIGION is all you could possibly be talking about in the context of 2100 years. Yet in other places you have declared being a Jew does not involve religion. Why do your claims depending upon which propaganda line you are promoting? That is of course rhetorical. It has to change because the arguments are mutually exclusive.

The descendants people of Palestine of 2100 years ago are still around. It just happens most of them are Muslim.

Quote:

Secondly, when a government (the PA and the PLO before it) has members who've historically declared that the murder of Jews or the destruction of the State of Israel is an imperative, I'd say that the Right of Self Defense means that anything short of turning them into Soylent Green is fair game.

The PLO was never a government. But you know that.

People who wiped Palestine off the map are the last to be taken seriously about wiping Israel off the map.

For the record they are ALWAYS careful to say Zionists not Jews. Even the zionist propagandists occasionally accidentally admit this.

Quote:

Learn to criticize the people who are teaching their children that if they strap bombs to their bodies, go into civilian gathering places, and blow up innocent civilians that their pet deity will give them free goodies. There is a difference between good and evil. You don't have to believe in G-d to believe that.

You mean like the pictures of the cute little jewish girls writing messages on artillery shells before they were fired into Lebanon?

If they had been killed by return fire from Lebanon we would never hear the end of the poor innocents being savagely murdered by the oh so nasty AYrabs.

Or how about the charming IDF fresh from one of the Gaza massacres?

I got all of these from online jewish, Israeli newspapers. If you have a problem tell Jews to stop being honest in public.

Jews stole the land. The owners want it back. That is all anyone needs to know about Israel. That is all there is to know about Israel.

All the previous said, you say I reek of it. Please give me two or three examples from what I have posted and tell me exactly why they are antisemitic.

I'm assuming it is possible to be anti-Zionist without being anti-semitic. If so, you are not anti-semitic but you are anti-Zionist. Based upon what I've read of your posts, you don't dislike all Jews but you do dislike anyone backing up the Zionist philosophy/ideology.

I explained the inapplicability of it to you at least twice and now to her again in this thread.

In promoting it you are approving the enslavement of the Palestinians just because the US once had slavery. Whatever the US did in the 19th c. Israel can do today. Let them get a peace treaty with the Palestinians before fools try to compare it to the Indians.

The land in question was owned by Egypt.

Treaties were signed between Israel and Egypt in 1979.

The other land in question was owned by Jordan.

Treaties were signed between Israel and Jordan in 1994.

So what's your beef if the owners of the land signed it away to Israel by treaty following years of war.

This is different how from treaties you argue in regard to the Indians?

The land in question was OWNED by the people who held title to it. The land was governed by different rules.

In 1979 sovereignty not ownership was returned to Egypt. The Jordanian 1948 claim to sovereignty over the West Bank was recognized by only one country in the world, Egypt.

Who else would they have given sovereignty to?

Could you elaborate? I wrote return and claim. I don't see who you referring to with give.

Quote:

A_Nony_Mouse wrote:

It claim of sovereignty over Jerusalem was recognized by no country not even Egypt.

Why is that a surprise? All of them want the damn place.

If if was blown to bits with a nuke, they would build altars and wailing walls at the closest point they could get.

What was wanted was the UN plan of a sovereign city of Jerusalem. The current version is Jordanian custonianship of the mosques. The US still backs the original UN plan. It is also the way Jerusalemites have solved their problems over the centuries after the three or four sides in every dispute get the mob violence out of their systems.

Quote:

A_Nony_Mouse wrote:

The world agreed the West Bank belonged to the Palestinians not to Jordan.

The world aka the UN did the same for Israel and you don't respect that, so obviously those in that part of the world don't much care what the world thinks do they?

When I said no country not even Egypt recognized the claim over Jerusalem that included all the Muslim countries. Sovereignty is recognized by other countries not by the UN. That function is no place in its charter.

Quote:

A_Nony_Mouse wrote:

Palestine has existed for at least 2500 years, 400 years longer than Judea has been in real history.

As parts of many defunct nations, including the supposed Jews of Judea.

Only Judaeans were Jews. Voluntary or forced observance of the Yahweh cult practices was a separate issue.

Quote:

So what? There are still tribes all over N & S America that have existed long before the white man stole the land.

Tribes who did not claim ownership of the land, that is correct. They claimed only the right to live off of general areas. They mostly sold those rights to the Europeans. The Iroquois are among the few who did not and they are still where they were back in 1492. Most of the fighting started for traditional Indian reasons traditional raiding parties and taking women captive and whatever wasn't nailed down. It is the way they did it among themselves. The raiding parties is what was really behind reservations.

Quote:

I'm of the view that the Northern Kingdom was never part of an ancient Israel. I don't use that word to describe those living in Judah. They were Judahites.

The only evidence I can find is city-state of Samaria (SMR) under Omri (MR) was the only kingdom of note in ancient times. That the creators of the OT drafted him postuhuously into the Yahweh cult is a separate issue. The similarity between the names suggests strongly Omri is a fictional character.

Quote:

Israel was something else, and proof does not exist as to what gods they worshiped other than Canaanite gods including Asherah, which those in Judah also thought of as the Queen of heaven. Those coming from Judah I see as no different than anyone else from the area.

Even more to it. Yahwen is mainly Amun and it is pronounced Amen at the end of prayers. Amun had the head of a ram. Thus the Shofar horn, sins being carried into the wilderness by a ram and the forelocks which are otherwise unexplained.

Quote:

A_Nony_Mouse wrote:

You confuse, I hope not deliberately, the entirely different issues of ownership and sovereignty. When Herzl's delegation to Istanbul asked for the Jews to be given Palestine (funny how he knew the name of a place that did not exist) he was told, "I only rule the land. I do not own it." It was not his to give.

If we compare as you and others do the American Indians and the mid-east one can not do so fairly.

The Indians were Nations. No they had no titles filed for land, its not what they did. They owned all of North America before the white man stole it.

Excuse but nation for Indians was a European word taken from the bible as the preferred translations for the "tribes" and "nations" of Israel. The Iroquois called themselves a confederation, a political union. As for owning there was no concept of land ownership, period. One cannot credit them with a concept they did not have.

Quote:

Though some sold out willingly.

Wars were fought and land was taken. Indians were forced to move. The sovereignty and the ownership of all of it passed to the white man by force. After all they were savages as far as the white man was concerned.

Wars were rarely fought over land. When the Indians agreed the Americans could farm the lands for a price they saw it as a way to get rich as well increasing the game on their hunting lands. Cattle were easier to catch than buffalo. The farmers took a dim view of that. There is where the fighting started. It was hunter-gatherers against civilized people, civilized in the sense that farming and building cities is taken as the beginning of civilization.

Keep in mind even if it really were as simple as in Hollywood using this argument in favor of Israel would also justify Israel making chattel slaves out of the Palestinians. That a thing was done in the past does not justify it in the present.

Further use of this as a defense of Israel also entails the same condemnation of Israel today as of America in the past. I am not sure where you want to go with this.

Quote:

A_Nony_Mouse wrote:

The US and Indians issue is much more complicated and involves legal issues all of whose complex details I cannot address. That said you will note in the US there is mainly "government" land west of the Mississippi which was ceded by Indian and Mexican treaty. All other government land including in the east was bought and paid for as per the constitutional provision covering eminent domain. To this day if you are an American you can have most any part of the remaining government land (if not protected by other laws) if you can make productive use of it. That is, FREE. That is what gold claims and homesteading were all about. It was the legal device for the land rushes. Government owned but immediately transferred to lawfully regulated claimants.

As such government ownership is a legal technicality not a fact as in personal ownership. The main purpose was and is to regulate future ownership and prevent armed land grabs and such as had happened in the Republic of Texas. The only exceptions to this have been almost all military bases and national parks. There is a shale oil deposit that is rumored to dwarf Canada's and the entire middle east in reserves as one of the exceptions. Now if you want to bring up something I have not covered fine. I may or may not be able to address it. I am not a lawyer, I just play one on TV.

I agree, you simplify this far too much. It's not that easy.

I grew up in the US SouthWest. The Indians were forced to agree to treaties back then, or be eliminated more or less.

When you were growing up? Much older than I thought. But Indians are NOT suing to overturn the treaties. AND the treaties do exist unlike Israel where none exist with the Palestinians.

Quote:

US law was forced on them. When did they willingly as a general rule agree to be subjected to US law.

Not that the current generation objects to making money off the white man gamblers, or in some cases oil.

What I am trying to point out is, even at its simplest level, it is fundamentally different from what the Jews did in Palestine. You cannot make a parallel of it but if you try it still leaves the Jews on the short end of the argument.

Quote:

A_Nony_Mouse wrote:

In every case an Indian treaty ceded land as in ownership to the US in accordance with US law. In every case the US had already claimed and maintained sovereignty over that land. The US was imposing its law upon the natives.

When did the Indians who were either attacked or attacked the invading white hordes at the time agree to be US citizens? Not unitl later did any of that happen.

I do not recall they were required to acknowledge citizenship in the US. That the US did was only after the 14th Amendment and that was only to prevent states from denying rights to free slaves by legal contrivance declaring them non-citizens. I don't know if born in the territories v born in a state was ever litigated as legally different making the 14th inapplicable.

The tribes are sovereign within their reservations. They were not drafted. If they live on a reservation only income earned off the reservation is subject to federal taxes. ETC, ETC, ETC which are all the complexities I am not going to attempt to get into I mentioned above.

Quote:

A_Nony_Mouse wrote:

Israel has NO peace treaty with the Palestinians. Absent that there is no place to even begin to confuse sovereignty with ownership. Ownership is a matter of deeded title completely independent of sovereignty. There are records of this going as far back as Ur. In other words as far back as we have found writing. We find such records in every ancient civilization worthy of the name.

The Palestinains as I pointed out were citizens of Egypt and Jordan. They signed treaties.

So far as I am aware only Jordan extended citizenship to those in the West Bank. In any event the treaties were silent on land ownership as they should have been.

Quote:

Does every ethnic group in the US sign a peace treaty?

Jordan for obvious reasons wants no part of Fatah. How many attempts on King Hussein's life did they make? How many times did they rise to violence?

I do not see what ethnic group has to do with a peace treaty. BUT READ what I wrote. I mentioned Indian treaties for the purpose of mentioning the provisions of the treaties which were to cede hunting rights NOT ownership and they did not claim ownership. The Palestinians do claim ownership. In all the talk about a Pal-Is peace treaty not a single word has suggested property ownership is a part of it.

Quote:

A_Nony_Mouse wrote:

Sidebar: There are no such records (or any records at all for that matter) found in bibleland regarding biblical Israel.One has to wonder what excuse the believers will make for the absence.

I agree, that nothing found in the Northern Kingdom called Israel would ever lead you to consider they worshiped a single god named Yahweh.

Nor did the Judeans. The religion of the priests was not the religion of the people.

Quote:

In the smaller kingdom called Israel, only the OT supports they worshiped only the Yahweh, and it does a poor job of that. The artifacts suggest otherwise.

Actually it is quite in the open. The priests are always raling about the people worshipping other gods. Obviously their religion was not that of the complaining priests. It could not be clearer on the subject. The conceit of adopting the view of the priests is absurd.

Quote:

The problem here is everyone needs to learn to live in the world without killing one another.

The Israelis are stupid in their methods. Stop shooting at us and we will give you your freedom.

The Palestinians don't stop.

A better way is to simply give it to them and move the fuck on.

Give them their property back and let them return to their homes even if they were in Israel and the fighting also ends. When there is no recourse in law to regain private property deadly force is considered moral and lawful by all but the most devout pacifists.

Keep in mind the Jews knew for a fact the Palestinians would never give up and go away quietly when they started showing up in Palestine in the late 19th c. Anything else would be childlike wishful thinking. If you put your pennies in the blue box the land fairy will leave a country under your pillow.

Jews who went there knew the Palestinians would never accept it. They knew it would always be the way it has been. And they know it will never stop. They all voluntarily chose to accept the way it is. They should stop whining and man up to the consequences they freely chose.

Every non-zionist source and even some zionist sources agree that whatever the zionists pretended to be outside of Palestine they always operated as a criminal organization in Israel. They specialized in the protection rackets, extortion and kidnapping. They murdered Palestinian women and children when the Brits arrested their gang members. It is in all the history books if you take away the zionist gloss.

Still today the entire country runs like 1920s Chicago. And I learned about Israel today from Israeli news sources. The Histadrut is as corrupt as the Teamsters ever were.

Jews stole the land. The owners want it back. That is all anyone needs to know about Israel. That is all there is to know about Israel.

Jews stole the land. The owners want it back. That is all anyone needs to know about Israel. That is all there is to know about Israel.

THAT is why she wont talk to you. That tribal bullshit right there. "My land" same shit when she says it "my land".

Deeded fee simple ownership is exactly the same claim Jews invoke against Germany. It is what Palestinians invoke against the Jews for their theft of private property.

What am I supposed to do? Ignore rights in private property? Please answer the question.

What you don't have to do is dwell in the past.

You are NOT consistent with that mantra anymore than Jews are.

When you look at Native Americans the same thing was done to them. Where are you not telling Native Americans they should fight back.

Are you EFing illiterate? Do I have to use one syllable words to recite for the umpteenth time the Indians CEDED the land to the US government and are NOT suing to get it back.

Every single tribe? This is a huge country that had thousands of tribes. And just because some Native American tribe leaders sold out does not mean everyone below them agreed. BACK THEN, And it doesn't mean that the ones that did BACK THEN always wanted to sell out. Most of the time IF they sold out it was because if they didn't it would have been taken from them anyway.

Now even today, you know why most of today's Natives are NOT suing? BECAUSE UNLIKE YOU they have put the past in the past. And any Native today that would try to get land back would be just as nuts as you. And what few reservations that do exist are still under federal law.

But you are out of your fucking mind to try to claim that ALL Native tribes said "Sure I'll sell you my land" Bullshit.

In the ear;y days when Europeans first moved here, they didn't mind because there was plenty of land to share. But as the European population grew, the incursion slowly pushed them to smaller and smaller land. Some had no choice but to sell out because of that invasion.

The continent was invaded. PERIOD! Some tribes sold out because if they didn't it would have been taken from them in any case.

I doubt the "Trail of Tears" lead by Andrew Jackson, was a result of Native Americans saying, "We'll sell our land to you and walk 1,000 miles under Jackson's military force" was because they sold out.

You're childish attitude is just as bad as white right wingers who bitch about Mexicans and want them all deported.

If you can get every single Mexican to move back to Mexico, and every single European descendant to move back to Europe. After you get that done, I'll help you get "those people" off "your land". Good luck with that.

Your a fucking childish brat who refuses to see a fellow human as such. Unlike you I don't see Jews or Palestinians or Mexicans or Muslims, as enemies merely because of label. Unlike you I see individuals as such. Get your fucking head out of your ass, and start doing that.

"We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus -- and nonbelievers."ObamaCheck out my poetry here on Rational Responders Like my poetry thread on Facebook under BrianJames Rational Poet also on twitter under Brianrrs37

That would be like blaming me for Dick Cheney's corrupt support of Haliburton and military industry paying off his rich buddies. I was born before Nixon broke the law, and I was kid at the time he broke the law, am I responsible for his corruption?

Guilt by association is bullshit.

Sharone and Netenbombhoo were corrupt, but there isn't one human run government that does not have some degree of corruption. To equate every single Jew to supporting everything their government does would be like blaming me for Bush getting elected when I didn't support him or vote for him and didn't want the wars.

If we are going to pull that guilt by association bullshit, then every Palestinian is a terrorist.

How the fuck do you think you can curry empathy from me or even Furry for that matter by treating everyone under the same label as being evil is bullshit.

Beyond and I and you are all atheists, you can accept us as individuals and by proxy that we do have different views should teach you a fucking lesson. Not all Palestinians are terrorists and I would support any individual Palestinian looking for a neutral secular government. And there ARE if you would pull your head out of your ass, plenty of Jews there and even here in the states that DO have empathy for the suffering of Palestinians.

WHAT I WILL NOT SUPPORT is a state that sets up a pecking order as far as religion. Palestine WOULD. And I do not support a Jewish state either. I would support a two state solution WHEN both give up on pecking orders as far as labels. I don't support either side collectively. But I WILL support ANY individual on either side who is willing to scrap the "us vs them" "my land" crap based on tradition and labels.

I will support any INDIVIDUAL on either side that values a neutral government and the protection of minorities and political and religious dissent. I do not like the collective attitudes of EITHER sides rulers.

They both churn out people like you that draw lines in the sand.

So if you want to attack the corruption of Israel's government, attack the corruption, not every single Jew. Just like it would be absurd for me to treat every Palestinian as being Jew haters because of Hammas.

You are a fucking bigot and pathetic. You exemplify the worst evolution produces. Furry to me is merely wrong and misguided, but she does not like you, hate every Palestinian or every Muslim, "just because".

You might as well be a fucking Nazi and have a poster of Hitler on you wall.

If you feel you are not a bigot, THEN FUCKING PROVE IT, stop behaving like one.

"We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus -- and nonbelievers."ObamaCheck out my poetry here on Rational Responders Like my poetry thread on Facebook under BrianJames Rational Poet also on twitter under Brianrrs37

Yup. Just our own country where =we= are in control of our destiny, not someone else.

Sounds like George Wallace talking about white America.

There are 5.7 million Jews in the Middle East.

A place which every historian who has investigated the matter, repeat EVERY historian, has concluded the Judeans either voluntarily left or converted to more successful religions. Amateur historians can come to the same conclusion using google. Again the HISTORIAN, who is both jewish and Israeli, Prof Shlomo Sand says the same thing.

Thou shalt not curse the deaf, nor put a stumblingblock before the blind, but shalt fear thy God: I [am] the LORD.

Based on what a number of people here have written, you're a few suits short of a deck of cards, so I think it would be best if I stopped giving you opportunities to make a fool of yourself.

Seek help. I wish you well in doing so.

"Obviously I'm convinced of the existence of G-d. I'm equally convinced that Atheists who've led good lives will be in Olam HaBa going "How the heck did I wind up in this place?!?" while Christians who've treated people like dirt will be in some other place asking the exact same question."

Yup. Just our own country where =we= are in control of our destiny, not someone else.

Sounds like George Wallace talking about white America.

There are 5.7 million Jews in the Middle East.

A place which every historian who has investigated the matter, repeat EVERY historian, has concluded the Judeans either voluntarily left or converted to more successful religions. Amateur historians can come to the same conclusion using google. Again the HISTORIAN, who is both jewish and Israeli, Prof Shlomo Sand says the same thing.

Thou shalt not curse the deaf, nor put a stumblingblock before the blind, but shalt fear thy God: I [am] the LORD.

Based on what a number of people here have written, you're a few suits short of a deck of cards, so I think it would be best if I stopped giving you opportunities to make a fool of yourself.

Seek help. I wish you well in doing so.

This is what he does not get. You being Jewish and I being atheist BOTH want him to get help. I know you don't see those outside your label as automatic enemies. I wish he would get to that point.

Now, having said that. You still don't get a free pass. That compassionate morality that you are pulling from your book, I hate to tell you, is evolutionary, not an invention of ANY label. Compassion for others has ALWAYS been part of our evolution, as equally as our ability to be cruel to each other.

I am with you in that guilt by association is wrong. Which is why you and I having opposite positions on god claims can agree on economics which is why I don't agree with Beyond who is an atheist too.

But you and Noony ARE alike in one respect, do suffer from the same thing. Dogmatic thinking. Yours however doesn't cloud you to his hateful extent, but it is still dogmatic. And I don't think you realize that "my land" is playing into the fears of Palestinians and hateful people like Noony. Regardless of what I personally think of you as an individual.

BOTH sides claim labels and tradition as political excuses as to drawing lines in the sand. Both sides have picked arbitrary starting points in human history and said "this is where it starts".

Our evolution has always existed, and morality is not the invention of any label, or race or religion or political label. Palestinians are not special because I have empathy for their suffering. Jews are not special because I accept what Hitler did to them was an epic horrific example of human cruelty. I am not special because I am an atheist.

Until humans can see their neighbors more and more as individuals, the needless divisions labels cause will perpetuate the divisions I know most humans, including Palestinians and Jews DON'T WANT.

But please don't bury your head in the sand and falsely pretend that the label "Jew" means that Jews cant do anything wrong, and that Israel has never done anything wrong.

I am an atheist and I think Beyond Saving's economic views are fucking up this country. Both Bush and I are Americans but I didn't go "he's an American and Americans can do no wrong". Our history as a country has been full of pain and hurt to minorities.

So all I am asking, even if you never give up your god belief, at a minimum, as well as I would challenge Noony to do in his support of Palestine, don't pretend your side is perfect and cant do anything wrong. No human is perfect and no label makes an individual automatically good or bad.

I promise I will support any Jew or any Palestinian who seeks a neutral government that protects minorities and dissent and does not set up pecking orders as far as religion or race.

As imperfect as America has been, and as slow as we have been to change. It was because of "no religious test" and "Congress shall make no law respecting the establishment of a religion", That today, we have Joe Leiberman a Jew, Muslim Keith Elleson and atheist Pete Stark, serving in our congress.

I cannot nor will I ever support a Jewish state anymore than I like it when Americans claim America is a "Christian Nation", despite the Barbary Treaty article 11 "As the government of the United States of America is not in any sense, founded on the Christian religion".

I think both sides would do themselves good to give up on religious pecking orders when finding common law and common ground.

You need to ask yourself what you would want if you were a Jewish minority in a Muslim majority. How would you want that government to behave? If you would want that Muslim majority's government to be neutral and inclusive and protect Jews, YOU WOULD BE RIGHT. So give up on a "Jewish state" and value a "secular state" which can and does protect freedom of religion.

Even in more secular Muslim countries like Turkey and Morocco and Greece, neither Jews or atheists can compete at the political level as the majority of Muslims enjoy. At least with "no religious test" here in the states you and I have a shot.

So if you value religious freedom, the worst thing you can do for Israel is insist on a Jewish state. A secular neutral government protects ALL religions equally without setting up pecking orders nor does it put minorities at the back of the bus. "Jewish state" to me is as bad as "Muslim state" is as bad to me as "Christian state" is as bad to me as "atheist state".

Common law is what works, not common politics, not common race, not common religion.

I would say the same thing to Noony. Until he can see a future for Palestine that sets up a neutral government that protects minorities and is neutral on the issue of religion, both of you will be locked in this needless conflict,

Both sides need to look to the future in the common human condition, and stop dwelling in the pain of the past that neither want to perpetuate. The only way to do that is to skip the labels and scrap the traditions. I don't mean give up those things. I mean change your priorities.

THAT IS what our founders did. They, Especially Jefferson said, "We are not going to make God our focus, or Baptists, or Catholics, our focus. We are not going to make religion the focus of law. We are going to skip the labels and value merit of action and minds of individuals."

If I were an Israeli Jew I would take the Star off the flag. I would also, if I found a Muslim whom I agreed on economic issues, and thought they could settle the beef, what would be more important to me would be the peace, and that someone got the job done. If it took a Muslim PM of Israel to do that, it would be foolish to put your faith first if you could have a Muslim PM that accomplished what Sharone could not.

Our country here has had Baptist presidents, Catholic presidents, and now a black president, and in the future it wouldn't surprise me if we end up having a Jewish president or atheist president. Because we have "no religious test". Something that neither Palestinians or Jews value in politics widely enough. Something that even in democratic Greece and Turkey makes it much harder for non Muslims to have a voice.

I promise both you and Noony, as soon as enough people on both sides look for common law and common ground and stop putting tradition and labels first, that is when you will have peace, and then, and only then would I support a two state solution. Because then both sides would be ride of pecking orders and each would value individuals over labels.

I may be dreaming myself beyond all hope. But I would not want to be a minority in either Israel or Palestine. I can deal with being a minority atheist here, because my Constitution is not religious based but citizen based.

"We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus -- and nonbelievers."ObamaCheck out my poetry here on Rational Responders Like my poetry thread on Facebook under BrianJames Rational Poet also on twitter under Brianrrs37